Ultimate is the fastest growing field sport in America. Created in 1968, forty-five years later the sport was still on the periphery of the mainstream but reached new heights in 2013 – two professional leagues, over 800 college teams and a broadcasting deal with ESPN – and the discussions throughout the sports’ history have never been as relevant. Self-officiation and the Spirit of the Game are the main tenets that make up the ethos of the sport and its community. These unique aspects differentiate Ultimate’s predominate culture from that of mainstream sports culture. This study shows the countercultural ties and survival of the ethos during the adolescent period of Ultimate’s evolution (1987-2010). It examines the progression of the community’s established grassroots culture and the governing body of the sport alongside the influx of young players with mainstream sports attitudes who bolstered certain organizers’ attempts to alter Ultimate in the hopes of gaining “legitimacy” through adding third-party officials, commercialization and corporate sponsorship.

The consumption of LSD and similar psychedelic drugs in New York City led to a great deal of cultural innovations that formed a unique psychedelic subculture from the early 1960s onwards. Historians and other commentators have offered conflicting views on this phenomenon by using either an epidemiological approach or by giving drug users more agency. The present study sides with the latter category to offer a new social history of LSD, but problematizes this topic in a sophisticated way by understanding psychedelic drug use as a social fact that in turn produces meaning for its consumers. It analyses the multiple cultural features of psychedelia through the lenses of politics, science, religion, and art, but also looks at the utopian and radical off-shoots of that subculture. To balance this thematic approach, it historicises the subculture by analysing its early days and discussing its origins, and then by pointing to the factors that led to its metamorphosis towards the end of the 1960s. In order to give LSD consumers a clearer voice, this dissertation is based on memoirs, correspondence and interviews that are used to balance press coverage gleaned from archival collections. With this wide array of primary sources supplemented by up-to-date secondary literature, it argues that the use of LSD and psychedelics led to a rich subculture that can be explained by the inherent complexity of the psychedelic experience. In turn, the plurality of opinions regarding the meaning and purposes of the experience led to tensions and polarisations within the large subculture, as well as with other drug subcultures and outsiders leery of illicit drug use. In doing so, this dissertation contributes to the social history of illicit substance consumption and adds to the fields of urban history and the history of subcultures, and makes a case for understanding LSD and psychedelics as a unique category of forbidden drugs that differ vastly in their cultural meaning from other drugs.

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For a more complete understanding of the significance of fascism in inter-war Britain, it is important to consider the extent to which fascist views were an expression or extension of existing mainstream views. This thesis uses original research to examine how far the promotion of fascist views converged with mainstream opinion and identifies the issues on which British fascists went beyond the acceptable boundaries of mainstream society. Examining attitudes to antisemitism, refugees, the left, continental dictatorship and appeasement, culture, and, finally, the response of the mainstream press to the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and their reaction to what they perceived as a conspiracy against them, the thesis explores the possibility that there is a sufficient area of discursive overlap to locate British fascists within the mainstream. Significantly, comparison of the British fascist press and mainstream newspapers reveals that, while there were considerable areas of overlapping discourse, nonetheless, the underlying motivations of the fascists and the mainstream clearly differed. With one notable yet brief exception, the majority of the mainstream press regarded British fascists as belonging to the political margins and, increasingly, British fascism and the BUF in particular, defined itself in counter-cultural opposition to the mainstream.

Le déclin voire la disparition de la religion dans les sociétés modernes est abondamment discuté dans le domaine des sciences sociales et particulièrement de la sociologie des religions durant la seconde moitié du XXe siècle.Interrogeant ce point de vue, cette thèse vise à rendre compte d'une nouvelle forme de religiosité, la spiritualité, qui tend à se développer mondialement, surtout dans les sociétés industrielles avancées, depuis la fin du XXe siècle, pénétrant diverses sphères de la vie sociale : les loisirs, la santé, la nutrition, l’éducation, l'économie, la politique, etc.Il s’agit de dresser un état des lieux de ce phénomène, qui se déroule en dehors des cadres religieux institutionnels et principalement via une démarche individuelle, en focalisant sur ses liens avec des facteurs socioculturels et avec les religions traditionnelles dans trois sociétés choisies : japonaise, française et néerlandaise. Au-delà, cette étude s’intéresse aux rapports de cette « religion invisible » avec la société civile, à ses potentialités comme source d’engagements multiples.Cette recherche repose sur le travail de terrain mené au sein de festivals dédiés à la spiritualité, l'une des expressions centrales de ce phénomène, en s’appuyant sur des méthodes qualitatives : l’entretien et l’observation participante sont les principales approches. Ce travail nous amène à constater que la spiritualité, phénomène mondialisé, se nuance et se décline pourtant localement sous l’influence des contextes politiques et sociétaux. / The decline or even disappearance of religion in modern societies is extensively discussed in the field of social sciences and in particular in the world of sociology of religion during the second half of the 20th century.Questioning this view, this thesis aims to account for a new form of religiosity, spirituality, which tends to develop on a worldwide scale, especially in advanced industrial societies, since the late 20th century, penetrating various spheres of social life: leisure, health, nutrition, education, economy, politics, etc.The goal is to provide an overview of this phenomenon, which has been unfolding outside institutionalized religious frameworks, mainly through an individual approach, focusing on links with socio-cultural factors and with traditional religions in three selected societies: Japanese, French, and Dutch. Furthermore, this study is interested in the relationship of this "invisible religion" with the civil society and in its potentialities as a source of multiple commitments.This research is based on fieldwork conducted in festivals dedicated to spirituality, a central expression of spirituality, which this work attempts to assess through qualitative methods: interviews and participant observation are the main approaches. This research makes us understand that spirituality, although globalized, is nuanced and declined nevertheless locally under the influence of political and societal contexts.

ABSTRACT Punk moved from a marginal subculture to an underground counter-culture -- hardcore punk -- which shared musical culture and sense of a communal identity. Local punk scenes grew, in part due to attention from mass media. New kids in the scene brought new tensions and attracted the attention of authorities. Two police incidents signaled a shift in the punks' view of themselves. I examine two punk scenes from 1975 to 1985 in Los Angeles, USA and Ljubljana, Yugoslavia by looking at newspapers, television programs, fanzines, music, and clothing. I show that a loosely connected group of individuals, self-identified as punk, became increasingly similar as the parent cultures put increasing pressure on punks.

In this thesis I trace the origins, morphology, and attributes of a particular strain of anti-materialism in the Western literary and cultural imagination of the second half of the twentieth century. With reference to previous work done on this topic I discuss how this anti-materialism rejects materialistic and rationalistic aspects of modernity and emphasises instead the importance of non-material aspects of society such as cultural integrity and cohesion, tradition, and instinct. I demonstrate that this strain relies on what Raymond Williams termed “organic form”, the fallacious belief that human society can and should follow a set of rules which can be objectively deducted from nature and I argue that it should be placed within the context of a long established anti-enlightenment tradition. Through an analysis of such writers as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, JRR Tolkien, Edward Abbey, James Howard Kunstler, Chuck Palahniuk, Brian Aldiss and others I show how a common feature of this anti-materialism is concern and anxiety over the potentially destabilising or degenerative effects of life in a technologically advanced society where mechanisation, mass production, and scientific advances have brought relative comfort and prosperity to most people in society and hence I refer to this particular strain of anti-materialism as anti-technologism. More specifically, I am interested in this thesis with examining the way in which this reaction allows for a curious confluence and convergence of progressive and reactionary tendencies. I argue that anti-technologism is a distinct and detectable mood in Western literature, and I trace its origins and influences. Without claiming to provide a functionalist analysis, I consider the role of anti-technologism in Western literature which I see as broadly facilitating an exploration and discussion of themes of cultural vitality and cohesion in the increasingly cosmopolitan and technologically advanced societies of the West.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-10T17:55:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cristiano_ Marlon_Viteck.pdf: 7663531 bytes, checksum: f19cc9ce99771dabbdaaeb23f860f4d1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-09-03 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The concept of teenager, which during the first half of the 20th century was being discussed in the United States, received importance since 1950, when it was definitely noticed that the adolescence constituted a huge cultural and social phenomenon on the American society. A noticeable characteristic from that generation was the contest of some determined social values. This phenomenon got much bigger during the 1960 s with the counter culture, that took the rebel youth as the main character of its manifestations. The cinema produced by Hollywood also influenced and at the same tame influenced these manifestations. Trough a process called juvenilization of the cinema, the cinematography industry of the United States started to produce a lot of work that were bringing a diversity of representations of the issues related to the youth theme during the 1950 s, and the rebel characteristic of a significant part of those young people was used as an argument for a lot of these films, the same happened during the 1960 s during the XXX. Trough the analyses of the movies The Wild One (1954), Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Easy Rider (1969), we intend to comprehend the social imaginary and the behavior of some determined youth groups of the 1950 s and 1960 s, as well as highlight important elements of the American society from the times they were being contested. / O conceito de adolescente, que durante toda a primeira metade do século XX vinha sendo discutido nos Estados Unidos, ganhou em importância a partir dos anos 1950, quando se percebeu definitivamente que a adolescência se constituía em um amplo fenômeno cultural e social da sociedade estadunidense. Característica marcante daquela geração era a contestação a determinados valores da sociedade. Esse fenômeno ampliou-se ainda mais durante os anos 1960 com a contracultura, que teve a juventude rebelde como a principal protagonista de suas manifestações. O cinema produzido por Hollywood também acabou influenciado e ao mesmo tempo influenciou essas manifestações. Através de um processo denominado de juvenilização do cinema, a indústria cinematográfica dos Estados Unidos passou a produzir diversas obras que traziam as mais diversas representações das questões ligadas ao tema da juventude durante a década de 1950, sendo que a rebeldia característica de parte significativa daqueles jovens serviu de argumento para muitos desses filmes, o mesmo acontecendo durante a década de 1960 durante a contracultura. Através da análise dos filmes O Selvagem (1954), Juventude Transviada (1955) e Easy Rider Sem Destino (1969), pretende-se compreender o imaginário social e os comportamentos de determinados grupos de jovens das décadas de 1950 e 1960, bem como destacar elementos importantes da sociedade estadunidense da época que estavam sendo contestados.

Il s'agit de démontrer la portée politico-religieuse du mythe conspirationniste. Dans un premier temps, aborder la question pluridisciplinaire des champs théoriques. Dans un deuxième temps, traiter de la formation d'une véritable mythologie postmoderne inscrite dans la résurgence mythique à l’œuvre dans notre contemporanéité et dans un troisième temps, appréhender les différents supports de diffusion du conspirationnisme. / This is to demonstrate the scope of the political-religious conspiracy myth. First , address the issue of multidisciplinary theoretical fields . Secondly , dealing with the formation of a true postmodern mythology recorded in the legendary resurgence at work in our contemporary and thirdly , understand the different conspiracy theories of the broadcast media.

Ce mémoire a pour objet l’analyse du discours situationniste dans l’œuvre de l’auteur québécois Réjean Ducharme, plus particulièrement dans Le nez qui voque (1967), L’hiver de force (1973) et Dévadé (1990). Partant du postulat que Ducharme a pu entrer en contact avec les idées issues du mouvement contre-culturel français de l’Internationale situationniste (1957-1972), il s’agit de repérer les similitudes entre les deux corpus et d’analyser de quelle manière celles-ci travaillent l’œuvre de Réjean Ducharme. Notre analyse micro-textuelle comparative se déploie sur trois axes principaux. Il est tout d’abord question de la place de l’art dans la société de l’époque et de la résistance à son institutionnalisation. Nous abordons ensuite les conceptions ducharmienne et situationniste de la ville qui, sur plusieurs points, se recoupent et se répondent. Finalement, nous analysons le discours économico-politique émanant des deux corpus, insistant sur la manière dont autant les personnages ducharmiens que les membres de l’Internationale situationnistes résistent à l’organisation capitaliste et hiérarchique de leur époque, lui préférant un idéal social basé sur le jeu, l’amitié et l’amour. Nous montrons que le discours situationniste est omniprésent dans l’œuvre ducharmienne et qu’il permet de souligner que, contrairement à ce que plusieurs critiques affirment, Réjean Ducharme est bel et bien un auteur politique. / This thesis is devoted to the analysis of the situationnist discourse in the work of Quebec author Réjean Ducharme. We analyse more closely three novels: Le nez qui voque (1967) L’hiver de force (1973) and Dévadé (1990). Assuming that Ducharme could have had contact with the ideas of a French counter-cultural group named Internationale situationniste (1957-1972), we try to pick up similitudes between them and analyse the ways those have an effect on Ducharme’s work. Our comparative micro-textual analysis is divided in three parts. First we address their vision of the role art should have in society as well as their resistance to its institutionalization. We then address the ducharmian and situationnist conceptions of the city and its organization, both being very similar. Finally we analyse the economic and political discourses in our corpuses insisting on the way Ducharme’s characters as well as the members of the Internationale situationniste resist to the capitalist and hierarchic organization of society and favour an ideal based on game, friendship and love. We show that the situationnist discourse is omnipresent in Ducharme’s work. We think it proves that even though some critics claim the opposite, Réjean Ducharme is a political author.